Chapter 6.
In a bar parking lot full of pickup trucks, Josh Werther parked his Cadillac.
Parents, fans, and barflys gathered inside the bar discussing football and elections and township matters and kids. Passing a bank of neon signs, Josh joined the chatter that rose with the curls of smoke. At a table he noticed the members of his chain-gang crew fondling longneck bottles between fingers and thumbs. The waitress passed. Josh ordered two beers for himself and another round for the table.
Josh sat down next to a wide man named Nick who worked in insurance accounting. Beside Nick sat Georgia, his emaciated wife, with her legs and arms crossed while she puffed a Virginia Slim.
"You're buying tonight, right Werther?"
"Not if I can help it," said Josh.
"Last man to arrive buys. And after what I paid out in claims this week for the sow barn fire, I'm feeling lean," said the accountant, patting his stomach with one hand, holding a chicken strip in the other.
"You can always make up some new policy addendum, and pass along the cost," said Josh. "What was it last time? An extra twenty dollars a year for window treatment coverage?"
"Something like that."
Georgia sipped gin-and-tonic, and shook her head when her husband gestured in a grunt at the French fries and chicken. Her makeup plastered over the smoke grooves in her face, giving her the skin the texture of a rising biscuit. The other two men at the table were also main street men – a sports-obsessed appraiser named Larry, and a business owner known only by his last name, Shoots. At the tables behind Josh were the sun-beaten faces of hairy-necked farmers, tipping bottles with gritty fingernails, wiry forearms, plaid shirts, and the faint smell of manure even after showering.
Shoots asked, "Who are you looking for Josh?"'
"Huh?"
"You have your head on a swivel," said Shoots. "Don't worry, Josh, I haven't seen Kathy. You're off the leash."
"I was just looking for the waitress."
"She's a looker, that one," said the accountant.
Talk of the waitress continued, with riling and backslapping, all of them chasing her with their eyes until she brought the beers to the table. The men raised their eyebrows when they saw her smile at Josh.
The accountant wiped his mouth with a napkin, "What was that? Am I right, or did she have her eye on me?"
At the bar stood several men, twenty-one year-olds, some who had graduated with Ethan Marak. They shouted and knocked each other about, playing a drinking game where they would open the bartender's drink book to a random page and order the drink – whatever it was – daiquiri, highball, shooter. They ordered the mystery drink and tossed it down before arguing over whose turn it was to pay. A woman in the corner of the bar leaned on her elbows, peering over a stack of gambling tickets, pull-tabs. Josh nudged Larry. "Looks like old Sally is down a few hundred tonight."
The bachelor said, "There are a lot of winners in that box yet." He pointed to the placard behind the bar showing the amount of money still waiting to be claimed.
Nick said, "Anyone want to go twenty?"
Tens and twenties landed on the table and Josh collected the eighty dollars in his fist and took the money to the bar.
The bartender said, "Another beer, Josh?"
"No," Josh said, gesturing to the plastic box and the placard. "I'll take eighty tickets."
The bartender spent a minute counting out tickets in stacks of ten. While Josh waited, Judd Blanks, from the end of the bar, yelled, "Hey, I was playing that box."
Josh turned.
"You couldn't wait a minute to buy tabs?" said Judd. "I'm still playing. It's a common courtesy to wait. Everybody knows that."
The attention of those seated on the bar stools turned to Josh. Josh picked up the stacks in his hand, saying, "Busy place in here tonight, Judd. And it's a multi-player game."
"Common courtesy," said Judd. "But I'll make you a deal. If you pull a two hundred winner, I'll only take half."
"Yeah, sure," said Josh, "Or, how about if I win, I'll buy you a beer – a tall boy."
Judd popped open one of the tickets in his stack. When Josh started to move away, Judd spoke loudly. "Or maybe instead you could approve a loan application once, Josh." He looked up and added, "Sorry, I meant to say, Mr. Werther," and smiled with a rude lip. Judd's girlfriend, Jana, sneered at Josh, and moved her beer bottle in wet circles on the wood bar, scratching her other arm against the bar, all while staring at Josh with a victim's scorn. The surrounding men and women stopped their conversations about football and elections and township matters and kids so they could listen closer.
Aware of clients, Josh said, "Sure thing, Judd. Why don't you stop in on Monday, we can talk then." Tapping the tickets on the bar top, Josh said to the bartender, "Thanks for the tickets, Harry."
"What for?" said Judd, unfinished. "Want me to stop in so you can deny my application again? Rubber stamp me again." He slapped the bar. "Denied."
"Monday," said Josh, letting his arms hang straight, controlling his voice, guarding his reaction. "There's a time and place, Judd."
"Time and place. And there's a Cadillac in your three-car garage and a rusted to the rods '78 Dodge Ram parked on the street in front of my rented apartment."
The bar quieted, except for Ricky Shelton singing a song on the jukebox. "Well, you're in luck then," Josh said, "because we do car loans, too." The patrons laughed and then turned away, thinking the banter had ended, but Judd carried on.
"A '78 Dodge," Judd said to the ceiling, leaning his neck back.
Josh stepped off from the bar to leave, letting the last comment die in the air. But Judd added, "Folks like me aren't allowed to be successful, are we? Not in this town. Just your cronies, right, Mr. Werther?"
"Judd," whispered his girlfriend, Jana, trying to calm him.
Josh walked to this table. Nick asked, "Is Judd Blanks drunk or what?"
"He's just being himself," said Josh. "His idiot self. He's one of those guys…oh, hell with him. Here, pull a winner, Georgia. That'll make him mad."
"I actually took some comfort in hearing that, Josh," said Larry. "Not to make light of it, I only say it because misery loves company."
Josh said, "What misery?"
"I've been called every name in the book for doing my job. Been shouted out of more places than I'd like to remember, usually after telling a man what his building or car is actually worth. I'm glad to know that you get grief, too."
At the sight of the pull-tabs, Georgia stubbed her Virginia Slim and reached for twenty tickets. One at a time, between her yellow, twig fingers, she popped the tabs open, looking for the winning line inside. The jukebox started a new song and drew a few women to dance in the corner of the bar, a ten foot square. An old man jigged alongside the women, long lost in his mind, estranged from the world, but clearly enjoying himself, perhaps the happiest soul in all of Immaculate.
Josh opened tickets and expected nothing. No winners. He did not care for gambling, or not this kind. On golf night, or during bowling league in the winter, he and his friends habitually purchased the tickets. It was something to do amid the doldrums of the week. Something to hope for. To win a few hundred now and then meant he and the guys could drink to elevation and still go home with money in their pocket for lunches at the diner instead of brown-bagging bologna sandwiches and Old Dutch potato chips. Or that was one justification.
The losing tickets stacked up on the table.
"Hey, a dollar."
"A dollar?" said Nick. "No dear, we want a hundred of those."
Larry said, "It's a start."
"Winner," Josh said. "Another buck."
Soon seventy-seven losers lay in the middle of the table, and the three one-dollar winners were handed to Josh.
"Should we go another ten each?" asked Shoots.
"I think so," said Larry, opening his w
allet. "Another ten oughtta do it. A lot of winners in there."
"A lot of winners in that box," echoed Shoots.
Josh took the money and the three tickets back to the bar, to the same spot, on purpose, to show Judd Blanks that he didn't care, that Judd's editorials from the edge of the bar meant nothing. Judd Blanks had a gambling and drinking problem, along with most other vices available to a man. Everyone knew the story from the summer, when on a Tuesday afternoon Judd crawled home broke after spending more than a thousand dollars on pull-tabs. He had arrived at the bar at noon, with a single blank check in hand that he wrote for an amount of two hundred dollars, which the bartender exchanged for cash. After spending the two hundred on tickets, Judd requested the check back from the bartender and crossed out his original amount, re-writing the check for five hundred dollars. The bartender paid him out the difference, three hundred dollars. That money also disappeared into the gambling coffer. On Judd's third attempt to re-write the check, the bartender rejected him, and snubbed, Judd stormed out of the bar, to the bank, to withdraw another five hundred and change, emptying his savings account. By nightfall, he was searching for more money, calling on friends from the bar phone, intoxicated and belligerent, offering his truck title for a few dollars more. Then he made his best decision of the day, and that was to fall down and pass out. For nearly a week afterward, Judd hid in his apartment, in the self-imposed prison that only broke gamblers understand.
The bartender counted tickets on the bar again. Unconsciously, Josh counted along, not out of distrust, but from a habit of his trade.
The young men's drinking game became rowdy and they nudged a girl enough that she spilled part of her Bud Light on Josh's hand. Two giggly boys shoved each other as the liquor took effect, climbing into their cheeks and squinty eyes.
Josh said to one of the farm boys, "Don't you have to milk cows in the morning?"
"Does the Pope wear a funny hat?"
With another neat stack of tickets in hand, Josh turned to leave, but did not escape a calculated insult from Judd.
Judd said, "Say Josh, what's this here under my napkin?" Judd plucked three tickets off the bar and fanned them like a full-house. "Look Jana, honey, I got three winners. Four hundred dollars, total."
His girlfriend shed her sour face and said, "You were hiding those?"
Josh listened but did not grant his attention, having seen this trick before, where a player in the bar hides his winners without collecting the cash so that others keep playing, thinking the money is still available. He had seen the trick, but never been the butt of it before.
"That's right, Jana. I pulled the two hundred, too. If you just bought tickets, Josh, you'll have better luck jumping kings in checkers than hitting the hundreds now."
"And that's why you don't get a loan approved," said Josh, tired of being needled. And he laughed at Judd, making sure the man knew who really held the full-house. The past five years had boomed for Josh and he had solid clients and good people working for him and he would be damned if he needed to take insults from the gutter. That, and after more than twenty years he had grown weary of suffering the fools. Best to let a man like Judd Blanks know his status: he would never get a signature from the Immaculate State Bank for anything beyond a checking account, on which he had already written twenty overdrafts. Judd Blanks would be sent out the revolving door of the Immaculate State Bank until he became dizzy.
At the table, Josh dropped the tickets. "Georgia, if you'd like to open these you can. Probably no winners left though."
"You never know," she said, snatching them up at once. The bartender took a large magic marker and crossed off the biggest numbers on the placard.
All a distraction, Josh mused, leaning back in his chair and peering toward the entrance. And suddenly there she was. At once, in the doorway, Shannon Hoffman. His initial elation passed when he heard Nick whisper at his ear, "A holy man approacheth from the east."
"Holy man?" Josh turned.
"Hello," said the priest, Father Packard, fresh-faced, standing in front of Josh.
Josh stood automatically, as he did with clients, to shake hands and offer a seat. Nick continued eating and eyed the priest with curiosity.
Holding a Diet Coke, the priest nodded at each person around the table. He was only twenty-five years old and had been in Immaculate for a year.
Nick said, "Hitting it hard tonight, Father?"
"Yes. I'll be up all night with this caffeine."
Nick said, "Caffeine is a drug. You know that, don't you, Packard?"
Josh smiled at Nick, envying the Protestant moment, which allowed Nick to treat the priest as a regular man.
Father Packard's hand rested on the accountant's shoulder. "Nick, I've yet to hear of anyone swerving and killing someone with their car because of being too alert."
Shoots laughed heartily, changing his demeanor in front of Father Packard. The priest asked, "How are the wives? The families?"
"Terrific, terrific," said Shoots, not mentioning sleeping on the couch. Everyone nodded, affirming all was well. They knew better than to express an issue when the young priest neared, for his eagerness to resolve things would keep him at the table. Josh had a different reason to avoid the priest. The young man had come to the bank with plans to expand the church, to build an addition, primarily in response to the new Evangelical church that sprung up in 1990 and began to siphon followers from the Catholic flock. In his office, Josh had spent hours tutoring Father Packard on the world of finance. Josh had to explain certain things, like return-on-investment, fiduciary responsibility, and when those ideas fell flat, Josh offered his own interpretation of the Parable of the Talents.
Father Packard said, "Are you all ready to vote on Tuesday?"
"What's Tuesday?" Josh said, joking. "I haven't heard anything. Is there an election?"
"Not to influence your decision," said the priest, "but there is only one choice on the ticket that is Pro-Life. I think you all know which one that is. It's important, this election."
"There are bigger issues than that," said the accountant, ashing his cigarette, "like agriculture, for instance. And you know the other party has claimed that topic. They got us all tied up with one issue or another."
"I understand, but abortion is a moral issue."
Josh said, "I don't recall the church pushing candidates in past elections."
"I'm not pushing a candidate," said Father Packard. "My concern is not even political. I'm mentioning an issue. A simple moral issue."
"I realize this is Democrat country," said Father Packard. "But a grievous sin continues in this country, even right now."
"Father," said Josh, "for not being political, you are very political."
"I'm only interested in what's right."
"Excuse me," said Josh, getting up from the table, unable to sit any longer when he could not see Shannon Hoffman anywhere in the pub. He had not come to see his friends, or Father Packard, or Judd Blanks. He had come to see her.
His pulse accelerated knowing that she had arrived. Desire crawled upon his lap, and clung to him when he stood. He attempted to remain unseen while being seen. The urge for more than one woman had followed him into marriage, would never leave him, he believed, even imagining that Kathy would understand his plight if he ever was caught. At a corner table, he rediscovered Shannon. She chatted with another farm couple – neighbors of the Hoffmans.
Passing the table, Josh did not acknowledge her. Likewise, Shannon barely looked up as he passed by her on his way to the bathroom.
A man washed his hands in the bathroom sink and Josh waited for him to finish. Once the man left, Josh inspected his nose hairs. It must be tonight and it must be soon. Her calls that week had been suggestive, full of teasing comments. Brief messages left on his office answering machine caused him to gasp in his chair, setting his imagination aflame, forci
ng him to shut the door to imagine her in the Cadillac or in the grassy Hoffman yard again. To meet her at the screen door like on the day when she had worn only a t-shirt on the day that Jack Hoffman, a hog farmer, hauled his livestock to market. Shannon, left all alone, dialed Josh at his office, inviting him to the house, since Jack's market trips invariably ended in a day-long drunk with his brothers.
That was a year ago.
Josh had a gambling problem of his own. Pull-tabs was not gambling. Gambling was playing the poker game of courtship with a forbidden woman and reading her face, touching her and waiting for her response, to see if she turned and ran to tell the world and call you an adulterer. A real game of chance and consequences. If she touched you back, the game was won. This had happened with Shannon. He had played and won and continued playing. And ever since the first time he could not bear for a week to pass without a clandestine meeting. Their places varied every time, remote or familiar – an abandoned shed, her porch, at the river bottoms, in the Cadillac, in Wisconsin. A year now this affair had lasted, with no end in sight. If anything, each encounter only made the time between visits more difficult, as their affair turned into a relationship akin to a high school obsession.
He splashed water on his face, to gather his wits, to stop himself from grabbing her. When he opened the bathroom door, he stepped out to see her back facing him, pockets squared on her tight-fitting jeans, her elbows resting on the table, neck exposed from a new shoulder-length cut. To touch it he would die. He mused in only slight exaggeration, all too glad to sacrifice everything for ten minutes more. The devil did not find Josh Werther's flaw in drink or drug, but in women. The need for a woman, not just a woman, but a different woman, one that wanted and needed a little something on the side of her own marriage, just as he did - and not just a different woman, but a woman that became jealous and angry as often as loving. He needed these things, too.
Barely capable of self-control, he managed to pass by Shannon without more than a glance. To grab her hand and pull her to the back door…but he passed by her.
Back in the bar, he noticed Judd Blanks staring at him, expressionless, next to his girlfriend Jana who gaped open-mouthed at the TV over her head. Josh looked away, disinterested in stirring up the dog of Immaculate when finer things, indeed the finest of things, awaited within the hour.
Seated at the table again, Josh finished his second beer and patted Nick on the shoulder, causing a ripple of fat to wave down the chest of the man.
"Packard left?" Josh said, smiling.
"He's no Dimer," said Larry.
Nick said, "I'm not even Catholic and I can tell you that much."
"Well boys," said Josh. "I'll see you tomorrow. I trust a few of you will be at the church to help me carry those pumpkins downstairs."
Nick said, "You won't see me," and tipped his beer back.
On his way out of the pub, he turned to see if Shannon noticed. Her purple eyelids blinked at him, red lips smiled, and the affirmation delighted Josh, as she confirmed their arrangement. Ridden with want, he lingered a moment at the door and stared at her, past the shoulder of Judd Blanks. This became the mistake that forever changed Josh's life.
Judd did not accept the stare from Josh as friendly. A stare from any man meant something more to Judd Blanks, and he muttered, "I can't believe the nerve of that prick. Smiling at me like that."
Josh kept staring at Shannon.
The perceived insult increased in weight until it jarred Judd out off his stool. He muttered as he stood. "You arrogant son-of-a-bitch." He marched toward the door, not saying a word to Jana, pulling off his coat on the way, dropping it on the floor, prepared to knock the head off the banker. Speaking to himself, Judd grinded his teeth. "Mock me and see what happens, you stupid ass, Werther. You want stupid?" He was still muttering. "I'll show you stupid. You don't know how stupid I am…"
But as Judd rounded the table and neared Josh, he realized that Josh was still staring in the same direction, even wearing the same smile. The banker was oblivious to Judd, who became confused enough that he stopped walking and looked in the direction of Josh's gaze, seeing on the other end of Josh's gaze a matching smile in Shannon Hoffman.
By the time Judd turned back toward Josh, the entrance door had swung shut.
The bartender yelled, "Can someone grab Werther before he gets too far? I gotta a phone call for him."
"I'll grab him," said Judd.
The bartender said, "Don't grab him, just tell him he has a phone call. I heard you running your mouth at him earlier."
"I'm a peaceful man," said Judd, suddenly in a good mood. "I'll tell him."
Out the door Judd ran, shouting until Josh turned around.
"What is it, Judd?" said Josh. "You got something to say? Say it. Want to take a swing? Take it and be gone. If it's a fight you want, you win."
"There's a phone call for you inside."
"What?"
"At the bar."
"Why are you running out to tell me?"
"I was near the door," Judd said. "Hey, I was just giving you shit in there, you know. Can't a guy give a guy a hard time?"
"You're doing it wrong then."
"Listen, Josh, I need to talk to you about something I'm trying to put together." He followed Josh as he started back toward the pub door.
"There are other banks around, Judd. You know what I've said in the past. Your history with money, it's not good. That Trans-Am, you didn't have it insured and bottomed it out. There was the money for the trailer house, and you didn't take care of the payments. You're batting zero. I can't help you again."
"I have something else to bring to the table this time."
"I don't think so," said Josh, pushing the bar door open to go inside, leaving Judd alone outside.
"Josh," the bartender yelled. "It's your old lady."
He walked across the room and leaned against the bar to calm his nerves. The bartender said quietly, "It's Kathy. Sounds upset."
Josh took the receiver and put it to his ear.
"I need you to come home," Kathy said.
"I'll be home in a few hours. "
"Rhea was in the cornfield," she said, her voice unsteady with sobs.
"And?" Josh said. "Is she out of the cornfield now?"
"And Ray was picking it with the combine. She nearly died."
"But she didn't die, right?" Josh said.
"Ray stopped…and Ray…the combine."
"Why the hell did you let her go in the corn field while they were picking it? Jesus, Kathy."
"Just come home. Come home please. For once."
"For once? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Please, Josh."
He sighed and looked at the back table, where Shannon sat, not knowing that Judd Blanks watched carefully, examining both faces.
Kathy said, "I'm losing my mind. The combine…it was…"
"Fine. I'm coming home."
As he handed the phone back to the bartender, his friend Shoots, who was on his way to the bathroom, asked Josh, "Trouble on the home front?"
"How'd you guess?"
"What else?"
Josh said, "Kathy let the kids play in the cornfield while Marak was combining. One of my kids nearly went headfirst into the combine."
"Damn. Which kid?"
"Rhea."
Shoots asked, "What was Kathy doing letting them play out there?"
Josh threw up his hands, irritated by the call, by Judd, by the missed opportunity with Shannon. "I don't know. I gotta run. See you tomorrow."
On his way out Judd watched Josh give a final signal to the table in the back. Josh motioned to Shannon with his hand, the same motion used to stay rather than hit at the blackjack table.